Hit the Reset Button & Delete Your To-Do List

These days in Medical Affairs it’s common for folks to do multiple jobs, have a never-ending to-do, and a constant sense of never having enough time. Have you also noticed how to-do lists never seem to shrink? They only get longer and longer. I have a radical productivity hack for you to reset and refocus on your top priorities: delete your to-do and start over with a more strategic lens.

The Power of Deleting Your To-Do List

We don’t realize how much huge to-do lists weigh on us. It can create this underlying sense of dread and prevent you from focusing on being strategic. With a to-do list focused on our top priorities, we transform being a person who wastes time on low-impact tasks to someone who focuses on what matters.

Delete your to-do and start with a clean state. Pause, reflect, and identify the tasks that align with your strategic objectives.

Signs You Need To Delete Your To-Do

1. You feel overwhelmed and stressed.

If your to-do list makes you anxious, then it’s being used in a productive way. It’s time to reframe how you use to-do lists and view this as a tool to help you focus on your top priorities. Creating a list of your most important tasks will help you stay organized and motivated.

2. There are items from months ago that you carry over from week to week.

This is a sign you are not prioritizing effectively. All these extra items add more stress and can make you feel like you are always behind.

Steps to Creating a More Strategic To-Do List

1. Acknowledge that a to-do list reset will be a huge benefit to your productivity and throw your old list in the trash

2. Pull out your goal list, strategic priorities or key performance indicators.

3. With what you want to accomplish in mind, start creating a new to-do list. Here are questions to ask yourself if a task is strategic and should be included or not:

👉Does this align with my overall goals?

👉Is this task urgent or important?

👉If I complete this task, will it get me closer to my goals?

👉Does it make something else easier or unnecessary?

👉Can this task be delegated or outsourced?

👉Is this task necessary or should it be deleted?

4. Review your to-do list again and get brutally honest. Review the above questions again. Refine as needed.

5. Now that you have a task list aligned with your goals and top priorities schedule time on your calendar to get them done.

Conclusion: Make Your To-Do List into a Productivity Tool 

Deleting your to-do list and creating a new one that acts like a tool to help you crush your goals will take you from the “I have so much to do” mindset to the “I am super productive and get the most important things done” mindset.

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